Upon his return, Ragsdale bought out Gruendyke and moved his family to the remote spot, where they constructed a small shack with a lean-to that served as a repair garage.

In 1921, it was announced that the sand road running through Desert Center would be relocated about 5 miles (8.0 km) north, straightened, paved, and named U.S. Route 60, a modern "high-speed" highway.

Ragsdale abandoned "old Desert Center" and built a poured-concrete café in the adobe style with an attached gasoline station and a huge service garage.

Across the road, a series of wooden structures were built, including a market (which at one time was the largest Coleman camping equipment dealer in the country), and a post office.

When Ragsdale needed a teacher for his own children and the few others in the town, the county declined to send one; there weren't enough students to warrant the expense.

Ragsdale hastily built a basic structure of stick framing with paper board walls to use as a schoolhouse, and placed an ad in Los Angeles newspapers asking for an auto mechanic with a large family, which he got, and a teacher was indeed provided by the county.

Ragsdale frequently retreated to his writing shack near the north tip of the rock formation called "The Alligator" (across I-10 from Desert Center) where he composed poetry—the stanzas are referred to as "Spasm #1", etc.—to be distributed in booklet form to travelers.

Within a few years, Ragsdale operated a number of satellite businesses in locations such as Cactus City, Hell, Skyway, Box Canyon, and Shaver's Well.

Around 1950, he left Desert Center, living the rest of his days at his log cabin retreat near the summit of Santa Rosa Mountain.

Garfield's friend explained that he was the closest doctor (50 miles) to 5,000 men digging the Colorado River Aqueduct under direction of Six Companies, Inc.

[4] Hearing this, Henry J. Kaiser, whose division of the Six Companies, Inc. was building the stretch of the Colorado River Aqueduct through the Desert Center vicinity, visited Garfield at his clinic.

When the aqueduct project was finished, Kaiser's next venture was the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam, and he took Garfield with him to manage the workers' health care, but this time there were 50,000 men, not just 5,000.

[5] Garfield's Contractors General Hospital evolved into Kaiser Permanente, the largest managed health care system in the world, but its origins are in Desert Center.

In 1992 a roadside historical marker at the site was unveiled by Garfield's sister next to the grocery honoring Desert Center as the birthplace of Kaiser Permanente.

[9] Its purpose was to train troops for combat in the deserts of North Africa against the forces of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

The rich iron ore deposit was discovered by geologists employed by Henry J. Kaiser during construction of the Colorado River Aqueduct in the early 1930s.

Plans for a project to operate an enormous waste management landfill at the mine site were stopped by environmentalists' legal actions [citation needed] taken to protect the surrounding Colorado Desert ecosystem and the groundwater aquifer.

The brackish water, sandy soil, and dry weather make the area ideal for cultivation of this hardy desert plant whose oil is used chiefly in cosmetic products.

In the early 1990s, Stanley Ragsdale commissioned the planting of several hundred palm trees in strange patterns on the town's frontage with Interstate 10.

Palo Verde Valley Transit Agency operates lifeline transportation services to Indio and Blythe for local residents.

[citation needed] Lake Tamarisk is a community about one and three quarter miles north of Interstate 10 off Kaiser Road at 33°44′20″N 115°23′20″W / 33.73889°N 115.38889°W / 33.73889; -115.38889, and on the Desert Center 7.5-minute quadrangle.

According to the 2010 United States census, Desert Center had a median household income of $27,031, with 28.8% of the population living below the federal poverty line.